Anyone knows Perry Rhodan?

I do! When I was a kid I devoured the books.. have the Silverback books from 1-26, after that the series started to become uninteresting. Had the lexicon and the Shipblueprint books too, but sold them some time ago.
If you're making a mod, I'b be interested in helping. If you're looking for a game, there's a 4x Perry Rhodan space game out... pretty old, not as complex as, say, SEV, but pretty nice. I don't think it's sold anymore, but maybe you have luck finding it on eBay.

Cheers!

I know it.

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Books 1 - 26 cover everything from the landing of the Stardust on the moon to the Maaks (with the 2500m diameter ships the Terrans used by then.) The Druufs are very early in the story.
Perry Rhodan is a german series, it appears weekly here as a ca. 60-page small booklet. The silverbacks (I don't think they're sold anymore) are basically compilations of these small booklets, with the filler stories left out (unimportant to the story) and only core stories.

Edit: As to why I stopped reading... For one, I grew up, and things like girls started to become a lot more interesting, no time for reading that pulp anymore; and two, the stories for me gradually got more and more esoteric, while earlier main characters like Rhodan and Reginald Bull become more and more bland. I tried to get back into Rhodan during High School in Germany, but it was impossible for me to udentify with the esoteric technology and the extremely bland characters... Perry Rhodan not in charge of the Terrans anymore? No way!

The current issue is booklet 2391 - so its probably the most extensive SF-series in the world.

For the German speaking folks here, the official homepage is located at:

http://www.perry-rhodan.net

I read some of it when I was in school (that was around booklet 500).

Man, I'm really getting old. Should start looking for a cell-activator pretty soon

Yeah, I hear IT has some to spare again.

Hi
I owned the whole series, but sold it. Are you german or english speaking?
I already was working on a PR-Mod for GalCivII. Now I feel that SEV gives you a whole lot of possibilities to recreate specific content. Right now I am working on a Star Wars mod, using the shipsets already done by others. Concerning a PR-Mod there would be a lot of possibilities, like special tech-trees for different races, one could change the artifacts found on certain planets to bring special figures, like Ilts into gameplay. I was thinking about the same with the Star Wars mod: finding an artifact on a certain planet could bring a new technology like "Jedi Knights" or the possibility to build a "Death Star" into gameplay. The same could be done with the PR universe. I also owe the old PR-Computer game, where I was able to copy some graphics from. So if you are really doing some shipsets, I would be outmost interested (I'm a native german speaker, by the way).
Let me hear if you're interested.
cu

Ilts... Gucky... All wonderous kinds of new special events crop to mind: Your ship has been accidentally destroyed by a group of Ilts playing around! If I had my books here I would start reading them again.

German here.

hello
first sorry of my bad english...
my question :
you say , you made a terranien set for an perry rhodan mod
you have it ready?

Maybe a little beside the object but of possible interest.

Side is in German, but it may be worth a look for non-german speakers too.

The spaceship/technical blueprints started my interest in SciFi, many, many years ago.

Have fun browsing...

http://www.pr-materiequelle.de/begriffe/riss/seiten/l0.htm

The 4X game mentioned in one of the earlier posts is called "Perry Rhodan - Operation Eastside". It was released 1998. Races and ships are borrowed from the PR series. The language of my PR-OE game is German, by the way - don't know whether an English version exists, but I would guess so.
You start with a single colony, explore space (up to 120 stars), build more colonies, research, meet other races, fight, ... Sounds familiar, doesn't it? A (German language) description can be found here: http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/Operation_Eastside.
There is a multiplayer mode, too, which I can't comment on.
And be warned! PR-OE games tend to be quite long - expect 100's or even more than 1000 moves for a single game. You can micromanage everything yourself (a very time-consuming task), or leave it to advisors.

A couple of technical tipps:
- PR-OE is a W95 game. It runs fine under W98, but not necessarily under XP. I have just pulled out the game again and managed to install it (after the game had spent a couple of years collecting dust ...), with difficulties. Can't say whether the same problems will appear on all PCs or just on mine.
- The Setup program produced error messages, under whatever compatibility settings. Eventually I copied all files over to my hard disk. Setup still failed, same error messages.
- Don't get fooled! When I launched the game without bothering to set it up, it started fine!
- Two more things to do to ensure smooth gameplay: Install the patch proe112d (available on dlh.net - if you read the readme file, you'll know why you want to install it!) and run rhodan.exe in W98 compatibility mode.
- Patch installation was a little bit tricky, too. proe112d.exe is a self-extracting ZIP file. When you simply try to run it, it may tell you that it can't find the game, even if you run it from within the game folder. I guess Setup produces entries in the registry or somewhere else, which the patch is looking for but can't find, because I didn't run Setup. Simply open the patch file using WinZip and extract the contents manually into the game folder. That's it!

EDIT:
I gave the proper setup procedure another try - and, surprise, surprise, it worked! The only difference to what I said above is that this time I kept pressing CANCEL when the error messages appeared, instead of exiting. After a while and I-don't-know-how-many-attempts (10-20?), the normal installation screen appeared suddenly, and I could install PR-OE in the regular fashion. The self-installing patch worked fine, too, and, best of all, PR-OE runs under XP without any compatibility settings!

After the first 100 moves, I have to say I like the game. It's an MOO (1 rather than 2) clone, no star lanes, but planets and moons with conditions depending on star type (regular OBAFGKMRNS), distance from star and individual characteristics. You HAVE TO micromanage your home-world, but can appoint admins to look after the other colonies (and these guys talk to each other), and resume responsibility at any time (and for how long you want). You choose one race (Terrans, Aras, Springer, etc) and play against all others. The Blues present a problem because of their Molkex shields, which are impenetrable initially. If you invest enough in the Molkex breaker technology, you will be able to penetrate (or dissolve?) the shields eventually, and fight Blues ships just like any other ship. Because my space exploration has been peaceful so far, I can't comment on fighting yet - there is diplomacy and trade, no spying or tech stealing, to my knowledge.

I don't know how many of you have the opportunity to play Operation Eastside, but if you have, you should perhaps give it a try - especially if you like MOO1.

Greetings, my little one!
Well - yes, I do know him, since 1961, I think...
Firstly - what time period do you have in mind for your shipset? The proportions of the equatorial bulge differ considerably over the centuries/millenia.

Secondly - Ship sizes: it would be great, if smaller ships (Space-Jet, Korvette, light Cruiser) could be treated like units (i. e. beeing stored on and launched from bigger units) and normal ships as well - that means, they should be able to carry and launch their own units (mainly fighters and troops)

Ship classes in the early stages of the series were (beyond 100 m light cruiser)
200 meters diameter would be Terra-Class, CA - heavy Cruiser
500 meters diameter would be Solar-Class, BC - Battlecruiser
800 meters diameter would be Stardust-Class, BB - Battleship
1500 meters diameter would be Empire-Class, SBB - Super-Battleship

Any ideas concerning PR-weaponry, force fields, FTL-drives?
If you have questions, feel free to ask!
It would be great, to have such a mod!

Greetings!
The beginning of the series (i. e. the early solar empire) is a good idea. The hyper-inflation of superweapons and superengines, which occured later in the series, could cause some problems.

I just checked my "Rißzeichnungsband I". There are cruisers with space-jets on board, but that are CA's, 200 m diameter. Light cruisers are carried by so called Ultra-battleships, 2500 m diameter. These ship-class was introduced early in the series (CREST III beeing the prototype, called "Ultraschlachtschiff der Galaxisklasse"), but they did not carry light cruisers, until a millenium later. The 2500 m class was then redesignated as "Ultraträgerschlachtschiff" meaning ultra-battleship carrier-class - because of the light cruisers they now carried.

Paratron-fields are not available for the Solar Empire until later in the series - but the Haluter, Ulebs, Schwingungswächter and KdZ (Konstrukteure des Zentrums - designers of the core) had them in the early series. Ships with Paratron-fields were all but invincible in that period.

Weapons in the early series:
simple thermal beam weapons - aka "Thermostrahler" basically a very powerful laser
Desintegrators, which would penetrate normal shields
Impuls-cannons, which would do the same and then cause a (relatively) slow burning thermonuclear reaction within the target
Paralysers, they would also penetrate normal shields and knock out organic crews for some time (for how long, if at all, depends on the species in question. Haluter for example are not easily paralyzed. It takes a very high dose and then the effect is not as long lasting as you might wish...)

Then there is a plethora of missile-weapons, aka "Raumtorpedos", mostly with extreme powerful thermonuclear warheads (hundreds of gigatons TNT). Compared to their destructive potential, they are very small, very fast and maneuvrable. Some even have their own FTL-drives and force-fields, as well as significant stealth-capabilities.
Anti-planet weapons:
the Arkon-bomb - it creates a slow burning thermonuclear reaction, which will turn the affected planet into a small sun - in a matter of hours.
the gravitation-bomb - it hurls mass concentrations up to a Jupiter-sized planet into hyperspace - in a matter of milliseconds. In hyperspace, this mass is then dissolved and annihilated. This bomb-type can also be "fired" in form of a speed of light energy-spiral. It would ignore some forcefields and deplet others.

FTL-Drives:
only two types (not counting intergalactic flight)
Jump-drives aka "Transitionstriebwerk", available in the very beginning of the series
typical FTL-drives aka "Lineartriebwerk" (linear drive), stolen from the druuf in the early series

Force-fields:
normal fields, aka "Normalenergieschirm" - the standard backup and navigational force-field
All other force-fields are linked to the available FTL-type: simple hyperfields (Hy-Schirm) are linked to the jump-drives, High-Energy overloading fields - (HÜ-Schirm) are linked to the linear-drives. HÜ-field technology was stolen from the Maahk in the early series.

Well - I hope, you can use some of this data.
Wish you a merry X-mas!

Hello!
Oh yes - the "Fiktivtransmitter", the legendary superweapon!
An ancestor of the fearsome "Transformcannon" - which later in the series was stolen from the Posbis (beginning to seeing a pattern, are we?)
Rhodan was given two copies of that superweapon with the restriction to never use them in a war of aggression. That restriction was handled very generous by IT and the terries. (As we all know, the best defense is a good offense...) Not only could it transport nuclear devices into an enemy ship over vast distances, it also displaced entire fleet sections long (or far) enough to ensure a tactical victory. One device was destroyed aboard the KUBLAI KHAN in Band 83 "Hallo Topsid - bitte melden!", the last and final one was toasted while Perry was trying to capture a Schreckwurm. By the way - these weapons were only provided by IT, not produced, let alone invented. IT took them out of the arsenal of "Dome Kesdschan". The weapon skipped the primitive hyper-forcefields of the "Springer", "Topsider" and "Druuf", but was never tested against modern hyperfields like HÜ or Paratron.

The CALIFORNIA (yes, it was a 100 m light cruiser, with very powerful engines but almost unarmord an hardly shielded) was used repeatedly to intrude Druuf space, but it never was carried aboard the DRUSUS or any other ship. In Band 88 "Der Fall Columbus", a docking maneuvre between DRUSUS and CALIFORNIA is described, where the light cruiser docked somewhere above the equatorial bulge of DRUSUS. Trust me, I just tore apart my archive to check it. Maybe it was a translation problem, but the Empire Class never carried light cruisers.
So much for now - I hope, that was helpful...

How about coming up with a ship-set for Perry Rhodan?

Happy new year!
I have to correct myself: the second "Fiktivtransmitter" - it was destroyed much earlier, during the Posbi-crisis, Band 134 "Die Kanonen von Everblack".